How do I master the English language as an ESL? Is there a certified /lit/ guide?
>>24949847>Your thoughts are limited by the language you were born intoThis isn't true. I'm German. My thoughts are in English when I read. They're in English as I'm typing this. But perhaps I'm a special case because I hardly interact with people IRL and all my online interactions are English, so I've trained myself to think in English too.
Mass immersion. Read as many books as you can find. Watch as many tv shows and movies as you can find. Listen to as many podcasts as you can find. Talk to as many native English speakers as you can find. Your skills will improve as you consume more complex material and a wider variety of dialects.
>>24950128OP wants to master the English language, not make low-effort 4chan posts
>>24949518It is truly unfortunate that discourse on 4chan has degenerated to such an extent that I, a self-styled master of the English language, appear to be the only one capable of and willing to enlighten you as to how to yourself become a recognizable erudite of English. I hope and imagine that "the proof [shall be] in the pudding" as concerns my credentials and worthiness to claim the title, and assuage any doubts you might otherwise have harbored about whether to follow my lead.Without further ado, here are the insequential steps toward your goal I present to you which have happened into my mind solely for this occasion—which is to say, unpreparedly and off the cuff:First, it is necessary that you be willing to employ unorthodox, perhaps *archaic* now more specifically, syntax for structuring your thoughts. If only I could explain more explicitly how each order of words functioned exactly to elevate your diction, but alas, again, this is entirely an improptu response.Secondly, you must become well acquainted not merely with the thesaurus's lower frequency words, but too some of the most forgotten gems of this language whose senses elude synonymy. An expansive vocabulary begets an expansive dissertation.In order to intuitively habituate yourself to these, you must indundate yourself with the language's peak literature for that purpose of eloquence, found chiefly within The Long Nineteenth Century, such as the novel Frankenstein, a veritable gauntlet and crucible of English mastery if ever there were one.
>>24949906>muh genders, muh cases, muh declensions, muh complexitydone that already mate, got rid of em a 1000 years ago more important things to do like inventing everything
I write for illiterates.
>>24951675>MrBeastMrBeast makes videos, retard.
>>24950803Non canimus surdis.
>>24951699Gen Alpha watches silently with subtitles. He notoriously employs a rather large text publishing team to make them better than the standard YouTube auto CC.
>>24950803Can someone explain what this means? I can't read
I love the poorly educated!
Any books I should read on how to write before writing a book? I tried to write just a page but it was utter shite.
>>24952050Nah. Just write. Write again. And again. And again and again and again and again, then after 20 or so years of continuously writing, you might create something of below average quality.
>Cat's Cradle>Quetzalcoatl
>>24951812I couldn't finish this book. It was terrible.
>>24952049**Houellebecq, I was using speech to text.
Ever since the internet turned against atheism sometime during the second Obama term, “atheism” itself became a dirty word. Suddenly everyone who was an atheist just a few years before become an expert in Thomism or heyschasm, and decided that believing in evidence was cringe. Religious zoomers started acting like they “won the culture war.” Funny how that works. Since y'all are either literal zoomers who were toddlers during the heyday of new atheism or have the memory of goldfish, imagine it’s 1990 so you can understand why New Atheism mattered. You’re stuck in an evangelical megachurch. The pastor is telling you dinosaurs lived with humans, AIDS is God’s punishment, Israel is our greatest ally, and questioning anything means you’re going to hell. This is also the same institution quietly covering for youth pastors who “fell into sin,” preaching family values while funneling donations into private jets, and condemning divorce from the pulpit while half the elders are on their second or third marriage. This wasn’t fringe, it was normal. Teachers, politicians, parents all nodding along. New Atheism wasn’t about being edgy online. It was a backlash to decades of religious dominance that people memory-holed because 4cuck told them to. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, were abrasive. So? That was the point. Polite disagreement didn’t work with creationist christcuck retards controlling the government and schools trying to ban stem cell research because muh “soulz”Now fast-forward to today and suddenly everyone pretends religion is this harmless aesthetic hobby and atheism is the real extremism. As if the progress of the last 30 years just happened magically. As if secularism didn’t have to fight for every inch. New Atheism didn’t fail. It succeeded so hard that people forgot why it existed and now they’re turning back the clock because irony poisoned their brains. But sure, keep pretending “both sides are cringe” while pastors are back on TikTok telling kids the Earth is 6,000 years old and Drumpf is bringing back dead jew worship in schools. Have fun when you're living in Christian ISIS and shitposting is banned. At least you owned le redditors online.
>>24951979Go back redditnigger
>>24951979The problem with your argument is that Luther's protestantism was the exact same thing but Christian.
>>24951979I was too young to remember the 90s, and I am not American, so I'll take you at your word about how it was. For what it's worth I share your position, although I can't claim having arrived at it (my parents were a lapsed jew and an ex-commie Russian woman, so I was raised atheist and somewhat anticlerical).But I disagree with you about why atheism has lost relevance. I think people feel extremely uncertain now. I can't really say why, but if I had to guess, mostly because of the overabundance of information, that developed extremely rapidly, in historical terms. To some extent economic factors can also be blamed. At any rate: when people feel uncertain, they need some kind of unassailable hope, a solid handhold, and religion provides that. For some people (usually those who grew up in super-strict ultra-religious families) they substitute religion for progressive ideology, but they remain with the same zeal and ideological puritanism.Ultimately, atheism is a luxury of those who are not afraid. Some people have an exceptional control of themselves and can remain atheists "in the trenches", metaphorically, but most cannot.Another factor, but this is probably more prevalent in the US, is that being an atheist is strictly a losing move politically. If you have political ambitions, declaring atheist convictions has no benefits and a ton of costs. I guess that's being a country founded by ultra-trad protestants for you.Ultimately, such is the state of the world that nobody is particularly interested in glorifying us any more. I don't really mind that, I live in an overwhelmingly religious (christian) area and I don't really feel any imposition from christians. Abortions are illegal and that makes recreational sex difficult, but I'm lucky in that my libido is low and I can remain a volcel easily. That said with muslims it'd probably be worse.
Atheism won. Atheism continues to grow faster than any religion. There is no Christian revival, it's a lie and a cope.
The Hitchens era of Atheism was always incredibly gay and lacked the philosophical depth of 19th century Atheism.
Thoughts on Pyrrhonism?
>>24950733People today have access to so many different views that any intelligent person who explores them will be considerably less at ease with any one perspective. Being exposed to India didn't just bring exposure to Buddhist ideas, it also showed first-hand how very diverse views could be and how they all took themselves as dogma.Juan Donoso Cortés actually feared this, in his essay on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism, he says that the great cacophony of views and dogmas will just drive society to nihilism, and that, he argues, is justification for enforcing Catholicism and stamping out opposing viewpoints
>>24950720Anything is better than reading the usual platostotle slop.
>>24951215Not a great plan
>>24951215Why are Catholics so dumb?
>>24950720Is it similar to iconoclasm?
The end of the year is almost hereWhat are top 9 books you have read this year? You have read more than 9 books, right?
Please do respond to the frog poster once again.
>>24951183A Farewell to ArmsLaurusThe Shadow of the TorturerFaustThe Sorrows of Young WertherWilhelm Meister's ApprenticeshipThe Great DivorceThat All Shall Be SavedMadame Bovary
1. An AdulteryTropic of CancerGerminalCannery RowPierre; or, The AmbiguitiesA Heart So WhiteMadame BovaryThe Star RoverThe Kingdom of this World
I only finished five books this year.>Why We WorkDidn't hate it but makes too many assumptions about people and management>The Burger KingEnjoyed it but it kind of missed the most interesting parts, ends in 1996 anyway>The Secret History of Mac Gaming, Expanded EditionSome of the way pronouns are written was annoying but generally enjoyable>The One-Stop Bible GuideNot great, too much Israel 1948 shilling>Attention Kmart Shoppers: The Rise and Fall of America's First Big DiscounterDidn't learn much that I didn't learn before. Comes from a certain (((people group))) and it shows.
>>24951183>You have read more than 9 books, right?No because I don't consider reading some accomplishmentBut I've mostly been reading fairy tales
This book changed my life for the better
>>24951955Sure
>>24946749I only know this book because the Transformers movie shilled it
>>24946749I had always wanted to perform cunnilingus, and I was born equipped with a proper 7 inch rapier, and so when the time finally came, I happened to perform so well that my combatant revealed herself to be shocked at my virginity in fact.I had read no didactic literature on lovemaking prior. Rather, crudely, I imitated the voluminous real-life cinematography I had thitherto consumed and let intuition and anticipation conduct the rest.
>>24951955Self-reported, of course.
>>24951708A real man gets off in no small part from the sheer enjoyment the woman is experiencing from the acts, especially knowing there are plenty of inferior men who are and were incapable of generating the same ecstasy through their performances. So, too, does a real man doubly get off upon his own realtime demonstrated superiority (to other males), if not real-baseline competency.That this eluded you leaves no doubt to readers as to which category you fall in.
I'm a little burnt out from reading and need some new things to reinvigorate myself. I'm open to anything but I really like Nabokov's black comedies like Laughter in the Dark, Despair, and The Defense. Vollmann's The Rifles was pretty good as well. I'm only just now getting into fantasy/sci fi and I like the Elric books and Connie Willis. Shakespeare is also a favorite, and I really liked The Wager and Endurance.
>>24950930>I'm a little burnt out from reading, recommend me some booksNo. dumbass. That's your body telling you its had enough and wants to do something else. You are frying your dopamine receptors doing this. Go work out, go for a hike, do something physical. Mental and physical, balance is the key.
>>24950997I understand this. I'm looking for books for next year, I have no plans on beginning anything new this month. I definitely need a long break and just want some new titles/authors to explore when I'm ready to get back into it
>>24950930>need some new things to reinvigorate myself.Nigga if you do not get enough recs simply from browsing this board, or are too lazy to use the Goog, you don't deserve recs. You're telling me you've never looked up books to read before?
Anyone else see Dick Van Dyke as Jason Taverner. Just finished this book. Still scratching my head at how KR 3 turned that girl into a skeleton.
>>24950742It really was weird to me. I guess she was turned into a skeleton because an immense amount of time was made to pass through her body when reality changed back, which really means her body was made to go through the same immense amount of time until, inevitably, it withered down to only a skeleton.
I hate this novel. There's barely any action, the protagonist doesn't accomplish anything by his own efforts, and the plot is generally sloppy and disjointed.Dick in this story, at the end, also exhibits the essentially American worship of black people.
>>24950793>>24950999I liked it :) I've read it a few times.
I regularly see threads on JP and Zizek but less commonly Jung and rarely Lacan.I have been reading Lacan on and off throughout the year and it has been pretty revelatory to me. If I were to try to take a stab at summarizing Lacan for anons that haven’t studied him, basically everything is fake and gay, anything not fake and gay is real, and >you are a subject beneath the fake and gay but not exactly a 1:1 product of the fake and gay. Your motif should be to recognize that to understand the real through anything fake and gay is impossible, therefore traverse the fake and gay knowing it’s fake and gay in accordance to your desire(TM). If anyone with more experience in Lacanian thought disagrees with my shit take, feel free to correct. Question: Why is Lacan not talked about as often as Freud and Jung are, or perhaps in general? Is his thought too subversive? Is it because he’s French? Pic related, worst mistake of my life
>>24950725Iirc is was X where he goes through anxiety. You're right in the sense this is all made up, it's literally whatever you've created to convince yourself you need a sexual partner. No matter how many paradoxes you work through you eventually hit objet. Everyone has this though, theoretically pre-Lacanian ideas can still apply. Big O is usually why he ends up being popular with all of those other thinkers. Big O is the imaginary symbolic order or hypothetical authority that still excludes jouissance of other. Lacan couldn't create it without borrowing from a schematic that's Hegelian in some ways. So instead of a floating truth value system (Lacan rejects this) you get a sort of desirous paradox with floating values. This makes it popular to a wide variety of people. You can substitute a car in or frankly anything really and start using Big O. The catch is that whatever has been assigned doesn't have this applied value, you enter a register loop, objet is just objet you invented the values. At some point this is realized and whatever your left with is whatever your left with. There might still be a coherence loop, realization doesn't end the sequence arbitrarily, but the realization can't be reversed.
>>24950506forgive me, but what is so special about Lacan other than him mystifying and turning eternal the bourgeois patriarchical family?
>>24950725Useful how? What problems does he solve? What truths does he reveal?>>24951038Jungian thought explains poetry, and art in general, better than any other form of artistic interpretation ever produced. It gives honest explanation while keeping all the richness and, if anything, enhancing the profundity.
>>24951973Can you give an example? I've always found Jung's theories, pardon for being so blunt, dumb and superficial as fuck.
>>24951973Anyone not a poet has no business explaining poetry - but that’s not what I meant. Poetry as the Greeks knew it when they adopted the drama as a cleansing rite of religion, is a form of psychotherapy - poets essentially being the descendants of witch doctors and priestesses.
Talk about poems/poets you like, post your own work, and critique others.
"Cartel" - Julio Cortazar-I see the world as chaos, and at its center a rose. I see the rose as the happy eye of beauty, and at its center the worm. I see the worm as a fragment of immense life, and at its center death. I see death as the flame of nothingness, and at its center hope. I see hope as a stained-glass window singing at midday, and at its center man.
>>24951252It's not a poem.
What's the one by Kipling about a settler/pioneer making his way into an undiscovered land? Thanks in advance, pic unrel
This is a post asking for general reading recommendations.If you read past that first line then lay any collections you like on me, please, because I'm new to poetry. I'm open to anything but if that's too nebulous then "The Graveyard By The Sea", "Ulalume", and "Song of the Bell" have all stuck with me recently.
>>24952018Get a compendium
"Chanukah" editionPrevious: >>24940898/wg/ AUTHORS & FLASH FICTION: https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQRESOURCES & RECOMMENDATIONS: https://pastebin.com/nFxdiQvCPlease limit excerpts to one post.Give advice as much as you receive it to the best of your ability.Follow prompts made below and discuss written works for practice; contribute and you shall receive.If you have not performed a cursory proofread, do not expect to be treated kindly. Edit your work for spelling and grammar before posting.Violent shills, relentless shill-spammers, and grounds keeping prose, should be ignored and reported.(And maybe double-space your WIPs to allow edits if you want 'em.)Simple guides on writing:Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>24951984חנוכה שמח!
>>24951997No I came to /lit/ looking for a recommendation thread and noticed the menorah OP. I never posted here before.
>>24952005Get out while you still can
>>24951981Anti-Chekhov's Gun, the ultimate technique, few have mastered it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_storyA story about the emotional despair when a boy realizes shagginess doesn't translate once you hit the big leagues. Also, how competition can ruin something even as trivial and inconsequential as shagginess.
>>24951575It is light on imitation, it's aiming at paraphrase. It's not a criticism; it's just not the point of the text.
>>24951622The Loeb is for Latin students The imagery of the hair on the neck was invoked in the beginning, it's what catches his eye, and the imagery is echoed here. You might say "splattered", "scattered" or "splayed" across her neck might be preferable but those words connote ugliness in English
>>24951686And in this case, OP's would ironically be a better choice for a non poetic rendering and poetic rendering. Normally Loeb's do win out for getting you the meaning of the text, but this lady took less liberties and still managed to avoid the problems of metaphrase.
>>24951622Crinis almost always means the hair of the head, like tresses, but it is also used to refer to the tail of a comet: it would most likely not be used to refer to hairs on the neck, especially with the connection to a describing a comet which might be subtle imagery here, in which case streaming works well as a translation. It is certainly possible Ovid means the neck hairs but that isn't a definitive reading. Under the circumstances 'aross' is a reasonable translation of sparsum since it preserves the ambiguity of the image rather than imposing the translator's interpretation
>>24951951I'm just saying streams is such a great liberty when the whisps of hair at the neck have been eroticised everywhere forever. It gives the impression Ovid is carrying through the water nymph origin and the river answering her to write streams, and there isn't textual support for that. It's a poetic translation which doesn't hew to the original meaning, while OP's isn't really losing or inventing meaning or metaphor.
